Monday, 28 July 2014

Divinity: OriginalSin has been picking up some excellent reviews and I'm about ten hours into my own playthrough. Given time constraints and the sheer mind-boggling size of the game (almost all of those ten hours have been spent on the opening town map alone), it may be some daysweeks months before I can do a detailed review. So in the meantime, here's why I think you should be checking the game out.

1. There's a clairvoyant bull called Bull. His best friend is another bull called Bill.

2. A key subplot revolves around the cross-social class romantic
struggles of two cats.

3. An interdimensional massive threat to all lifekind as we
know it is treated as a middling and not terribly pressing subplot for most of the game.

5. Early in the game you meet a talking clam which quotes from Moby Dick.

6. Zombie enemies occasionally sport the names of the person
they used to be (like 'Rob'), to make you feel slightly bad when you splatter them.

7. You create two PCs instead of one, and can have them spend
the whole game bickering with one another if you want to explore the duality of
your own psyche. Or merely accelerate your own inevitable mental breakdown.

Sunday, 27 July 2014

Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones may have suffered whiplash as two different sources offered pessimistic and then optimistic news on the progress of The Winds of Winter, the sixth and (planned-to-be) penultumate novel in the series.

First off, George R.R. Martin's UK editor Jane Johnson tweeted that The Winds of Winter was not on their schedule for 2015. This was taken by some to mean that the book was definitely not coming out next year. Johnson later clarified that the book was merely not scheduled at this time. Given the rapid turn-around on the previous novels (two months for A Storm of Swords, five for A Feast for Crows, three for A Dance with Dragons) this is not quite as bad as it first sounds, as those books weren't on the early schedules for their respective years either.

Then, at the San Diego Comic-Con, Martin himself offered some optimistic news. He confirmed he has not written a script for Season 5 of Game of Thrones and will not be undertaking any new set visits or other travelling obligations beyond those that he has already agreed to. This is all specifically designed to give him the maximum amount of time needed to finish The Winds of Winter. However, Martin would still not give a precise update on how much of the book he has completed at this time.

Whilst this sounds great, we should also recall that Martin skipped the 2007 Worldcon to finish A Dance with Dragons, and the book still took more than three years to come out after that point. It would seem unlikely that Winter is that amount of time away, but it is always best to exercise caution with any of this news.

Previously, on Winterwatch:

Martin completed the fifth book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, in early 2011. Several complete chapters were removed from the novel and added to the start of The Winds of Winter. The amount of material is unclear, but seems to be a minimum of five or six chapters, totalling somewhere between 150 and 200 manuscript pages.

In February 2013 Martin delivered a further 168 manuscript pages to his American publisher. This would rise the completed total to around 318-368 manuscript pages. In April 2013 Martin said he had approximately one-quarter of the novel finished, and expected the novel to come in at around the same size as A Dance with Dragons, which was 1,520 manuscript pages. One quarter of that amount would equal approximately 380 manuscript pages, so this tracks pretty well.

Since April 2013 Martin has not offered any concrete information on his progress, instead preferring to make positive comments that he is writing fast and needs to stay ahead of the TV show. He has confirmed that he is doing far less rewriting on The Winds of Winter than the previous novel in the series, the constant editing and re-editing of which (particularly the knotty events in Meereen) was the principal reason for the delays to that volume. Although a cause for optimism, Martin has cautioned that the book is still incomplete, meaning that further rewrites cannot be ruled out for further down the line.

During the writing of previous novels in the series, Martin had offered more frequent updates on his progress, along with firmer figures on how many pages he had completed. In his parlance, "completed" means the pages in question have been written, re-written to his satisfaction and given at least an initial editing pass by his American editor. With Martin not having sent any further material to his editor since February 2013, he is possibly unwilling to put a hard figure to his progress. It may also be that with Dragons, the constant re-structuring of the novel meant that chapters and pages he declared completed and counted had to be rewritten again and again, meaning that the value of declaring them finished was dubious. For this reason, it may be that we won't start getting more precise figures on Winter's progress until the book is a lot closer to completion.

As for a release date, late 2015 would appear to still be possible but the door is starting to close on it. With Season 6 of Thrones likely to start drawing on Winter storylines and material, he really needs to release the novel before April 2016 to ensure the TV show does not overtake him. However, with the TV series currently projected to only last seven or eight seasons, he would not then have very much time to write the (currently) final novel in the series.

Friday, 25 July 2014

British actors Jonathan Pryce and Alexander Siddig are the highest-profile additions to Season 5 of Game of Thrones. HBO have released the names of no less than nine additions to the cast at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Jonathan Pryce is a hugely versatile actor, well-versed in theatre and smaller film and TV roles before achieving his breakthrough as the lead actor in Terry Gilliam's 1985 cult classic Brazil. He played the main villain in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies as well as playing Juan Peron in Evita. Numerous film and TV roles on both sides of the Atlantic followed, including a recurring role as Governor Swann in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

On Game of Thrones he will be playing the 'High Sparrow'. The High Sparrow is a wandering septon (a priest of the Faith of the Seven) who preaches to the smallfolk of the Seven Kingdoms. Sickened by the ravages of the War of the Five Kings, he travels to King's Landing to seek greater help from the High Septon and the Iron Throne in protecting the people. Several players in the capital seek to use his arrival for their own ends.

Alexander Siddig is best-known for his seven-year stint as Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He has appeared in films such as Syriana, Kingdom of Heaven and Clash of the Titans, and TV shows including 24 and Atlantis (having multi-episode arcs on both).

On Game of Thrones Siddig will be playing Prince Doran Nymeros Martell, the ruling Prince of Dorne. One of the most powerful men in the Seven Kingdoms, Doran is the older brother of Prince Oberyn, the Red Viper, but ill health has kept Doran at home in his castle of Sunspear overlooking the Narrow Sea for several years. Unlike his younger, headstrong and more fiery brother, Doran is noted for being thoughtful, slow to anger and keen on keeping Dorne out of war. The other rulers of the Seven Kingdoms do not consider him a major threat, believing his is afraid to take bold action. However, his peaceful policies also have their opponents within Dorne.

There is looming controversy in the decision to replace Aimee Richardson, who was popular amongst fans for her amusing Tweets and engagement with them at conventions, and most notably the official HBO description of Prince Trystane as Doran's heir. This heavily suggests that both Princess Arianne Martell, the heir to Dorne in the novels, and Prince Quentyn (Trystan's older brother) have either been removed from the TV series or somehow delayed until later seasons.

There is also some surprise at a lack of any indications that characters such as Euron and Victarion Greyjoy, Young Griff or Jon Connington will appear this season, although it is possible that further announcements will be made down the line. It is also possible that Season 5 will see the most drastic changes yet to GoT's story, as entire plots and subplots from the novels are discarded.

Season 5 of Game of Thrones is now shooting in Northern Ireland, Croatia and Spain (no Iceland this year, apart from establishing shots) and will air in the USA and UK in March or April of 2015.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014

Fantasy author Melanie Rawn has confirmed that she is planning to finally write the third and concluding volume of her Exiles Trilogy, The Captal's Tower, some seventeen years after the previous volume was released.

Rawn began work on the Exiles Trilogy in the early 1990s, releasing The Ruins of Ambrai in 1994 and The Mageborn Traitor in 1997. Rawn's mother, who also served as her first test reader and sounding board for ideas, passed away after this point and Rawn gave up writing for nine years, returning with a new trilogy, Spellbinder, in 2006. The author said she needed a new project to recharge her creative batteries before completing the Exiles Trilogy. However, after Spellbinder and its sequel Fire Raiser were published, the new trilogy was cancelled due to poor sales. Rather than return to the incomplete trilogy, she wrote The Diviner (the long-planned sequel to her 1996 collaborative novel, The Golden Key) and then embarked on a new series, Glass Thorns, a move which irritated many of her fans (not to mention generating substantial commentary on this blog).

Three books have been published in the Glass Thorns sequence: Touchstone, Elsewhens and Thornlost. A fourth volume is completed and due for publication next year, and Rawn is working on a fifth volume. However, she has promised that once that is complete, her next project will indeed be The Captal's Tower. Her statement:

"Yes, I will write Captal’s Tower.
I’m very sorry it’s taken so long. My sincere thanks to all of you who
have been so patient. I’m currently writing the fifth book in the “Glass
Thorns” series, and after that my plan is to get to work on Captal’s Tower. If anything about that plan changes, I’ll post on my website."

Good news, following a long period with no news at all (and some ill-advised jabs at fans wondering where the book was in her Spellbinder novels). When The Captal's Tower is released I will finally be able to read the whole trilogy and see what all the fuss is about.

Monday, 21 July 2014

For many young Star Wars fans, the most iconic moments from the original movie trilogy were the dogfights between the Rebel Alliance's X-Wings and the Galactic Empire's TIE Fighters. As the massive sales of the later X-Wing computer games show, the fighters have remained hugely popular.

In a video today, director J.J. Abrams revealed the design of a new generation of X-Wing fighter. Coming from a generation (or two) further on from the originals, these X-Wings are sleeker and appear to split their wings on a vertical axis rather than horizontal (with the wings appearing to pop up from behind one another, a bit like some of the prequel trilogy proto-X-Wings). There's also no sign of a housing for an astromech droid, suggesting they are no longer needed or are stored internally, which, as R2-D2 can attest from the end of Episode IV, makes a hell of a lot more sense.

These new X-Wings appear to also be a homage to Ralph McQuarrie's amazing concept art for the original films. One of McQuarrie's ideas was that the X-Wings would have two large engines which would split, rather than four smaller ones that would not.

There's also something of a design similarity to the Z-95 Headhunter, a predecessor design to the X-Wing developed for the Expanded Universe which enjoyed great fan popularity before appearing in The Clone Wars (and thus becoming canon even for the new Star Wars continuity).

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Following recent casting and production news on The Expanse TV series, co-writer of the novels (as one half of James S.A. Corey) Daniel Abraham has spoken about the general status of the project and how it is unfolding, including how they've got some top ex-Breaking Bad talent on board.

The role of Detective Miller is going to be played by Thomas Jane. Who,
if you don’t know him, was designed in a government lab for the role.
Seriously. He’d done The Punisher and Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and
Stephen King’s The Mist and Dreamcatcher. The man knows his genre
chops. And he’s also been in Boogie Nights and Magnolia and The Thin
Red Line. And Hung, where he got the three Golden Globe nominations.
He can play tough, he can play vulnerable, and most of all he can play
someone who’s well-bruised by the world. There was a while there I was
afraid we weren’t going to get him, but ever since we have, I’ve been
tracking down clips of his performances and feeling like I just found a
Banksy print in my alley. It’s that level of cool.

And then there’s the director. I was unaware coming in of how
important the first director is in a new show like this. Turns out,
sort of critical, because whatever they do, however they approach the
show, it pretty much sets the tone for everyone who comes after. We
already had a fair amount of Breaking Bad in our project’s DNA because
we were working with Sharon Hall who developed it back when she was at
Sony.

So now we have more.

Terry McDonough did several episodes of Breaking Bad, including the
one called Better Call Saul which was for my money one of the best hours
of one of the best shows in my lifetime. I didn’t know it, but I’d
actually seen his work the first time years ago in a show called Wire in
the Blood that I still remember. He’s won the BAFTA and Royal
Television Society (UK) Awards. When they were talking to him about our
show, he was actually in my hometown working with the folks on Better
Call Saul. If you’re looking for someone who can take the project and
see complex characters in serious conflicts, this is kind of your guy.
He’s not one of the people who looks down on SF. He directed Brian Cox
in Doctor Who: An Adventure in Time and Space and just got a Hugo
nomination for it. He directed Patrick Stewart in The Eleventh Hour.
Between his instincts for nuance and humanity and his track record for
making character-centered, award-winning television, he’s a brilliant
fit.

In addition to Mark and Hawk – who, I would like to say for the record,
have some of the best instincts for story I’ve seen anywhere – Naren
Shankar has come on board to help out. That might not be a name you
know, but he worked as one flavor or another of producer on CSI from
2002 to 2010 while that show was not only one of the best rated but
possibly the most visually stylish things on network TV. He’s worked on
Star Trek and Farscape and The Outer Limits. And we have other writers
who’ve come from shows like Mad Men (seriously, one of our writers has
Emmy nominations from Mad Men), and The Killing and Burn Notice.

It's worth reading the full report here, including on how Weta Digital will be providing the effectsfor the series,

The Expanse's first, ten-episode season will be mostly based on Leviathan Wakes, the first novel in the series. More news will be revealed soon.

Sunday, 13 July 2014

The Expanse TV series has gotten its first castmember. Thomas Jane will be playing the role of Joe Miller, a corporate security officer in the asteroid belt who is caught up in a growing interplanetary crisis. It is not known if he will be wearing the novel character's trademark hat.

Thomas Jane will known to genre fans from his appearances films such as Deep Blue Sea, The Punisher and The Crow: City of Angels, and to more general audiences from films such as Boogie Nights and his starring role in the HBO TV series Hung.

The Expanse is being produced by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, alongside the more recently-appointed Naren Shankar, a writer on the three 1990s Star Trek shows as well as The Outer Limits, Farscape and CSI. The show will air on SyFy in the USA.

Friday, 11 July 2014

Sarah Manning and her 'sisters', Cosima and Alison, find their loyalties divided when Sarah's daughter Kira disappears. Sarah believes that the Dyad Institute, which Cosima works for, is responsible, whilst it appears that a group of fanatics known as the Proletheans may also be trying to hurt Sarah and her newfound family. Secrets from thirty years ago re-emerge as all the factions involved in this struggle try to find the secret to flawless genetic engineering, no matter the cost.

Orphan Black's first season was the undoubted SF TV highlight of 2013, with Tatiana Maslany turning in a powerhouse performance as multiple versions of the same character. Some clever writing and strong supporting turns, not to mention pitch-perfect pacing, made the show even better. This second season has a lot to live up to.

For the most part, it works. The pacing remains strong and the writers do an excellent job of answering past mysteries whilst making new revelations and setting up fresh puzzles. They also resist the urge to play "Clone of the Week", instead restricting themselves to exploring the character of Rachel (introduced at the end of Season 1) and briefly touching on the lives of two other clones (one solely, but still heartbreakingly, through video diaries). Other characters like Dr. Leekie, Alison's troubled husband Donnie and the ever-more-formidable Mrs. S are fleshed out further and there's some strong newcomers in the form of Michael Huisman as Cal (impressing more than his recent, underwritten appearance on Game of Thrones, it has to be said), Michelle Forbes as Marion and Ari Millen as Mark Rollins. There's still a rich vein of humour, particularly in Alison and Felix's stories, as well as tenderness. The romance between Cosima and Delphine is particularly well-handled.

Elsewhere, the show can't quite match the first season's near-effortless-seeming grace. Some characters get lost in the mix for long periods, with Art and Paul not getting very much to do. One character's return from the dead is highly unconvincing, although it does eventually lead to some of the best scenes in the series to date. The series also flirts with M. Night Shyamalanisms with the Village-esquescenes at the Prolethean farm going on for a bit too long. Also, the threat of Kira constantly being kidnapped gets old quickly and starts to get a bit too reminiscent of Hera in Battlestar Galactica. There's also a feeling that Vic gets parachuted into the show again when he doesn't really have much of a reason for being there beyond fan service, but given that his story is pretty funny we can forgive that.

If its second season is a little bit more inconsistent than the first, Orphan Black (****½) still remains the best SFF show on television thanks to its clever writing, dark humour (including the most wince-inducing death scene I've ever seen in anything) and its outrageously good performances, particularly from its leading lady. Roll on Season 3. Season 2 of Orphan Black will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the USA next week, and in the UK later in the year.

MTV has greenlit a ten-episode TV series based on Terry Brooks's Shannara novels. The first season will be an adaptation of the second novel in the series, The Elfstones of Shannara, presumably on the basis that trying to adapt The Sword of Shannara would result in near-instantaneous lawsuits from the Tolkien Estate and Peter Jackson.

Al Gough and Miles Millar, who produced Smallville, will work as showrunners on the new project, whilst Jon Favreau (the director of the first two Iron Man movies) will act as a producer. Jonathan Liebesman, the director of Battle Los Angeles, Wrath of the Titans and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, will direct the first two episodes.

I'm attending LonCon 3, this year's Worldcon in London, and, insanely, have been drafted to appear on three panels. These are as follows (details tentative until confirmed):

Comparative Criticism

Friday 20:00 - 21:00
What are the challenges and constraints of reviewing different kinds
of media? Reviewers of books, TV, film and games discuss. Is it possible
or desirable to be "an SF critic" when SF is found in so many different
forms?
Paul Kincaid, Nick Lowe, Mahvesh Murad, Adam Whitehead, Roz J Kaveney

The Road Goes Ever On and On: The Wheel of Time

Saturday 12:00 - 13:30
With the final volume, A Memory of Light, published last
year, and a Hugo nomination for the entire series this year, this seems
the perfect time to look back on twenty-four years of the Wheel of Time.
Our panel will reflect on Robert Jordan's achievement in creating the
series, its runaway success, Brandon Sanderson's completion of the work,
and the lasting influence of WoT on the fantasy genre.
Adam Whitehead, Harriet McDougal, Maria Simons

My Opinions, Let Me Show You Them

Sunday 16:30 - 18:00
There are many different approaches to book blogging: some focus on
news and announcements, running author interviews and ARC giveaways
supported by publishers; others concentrate on reviewing and opinion
pieces; still others are devoted to raising awareness of certain types
of writing, like SF Mistressworks or the World SF Blog. Our panel
discusses how they chose their blogs' format and focus, how the blogs
evolved over time, and how they found their 'voice' and their audience.
Foz Meadows, Thea James, Aidan Moher, Adam Whitehead

The rest of the time, I suspect I will be in the bar or gawping at unaffordably rare SFF collectibles.

Thursday, 10 July 2014

Tim Schafer and his video game production company, Double Fine Studios, have acquired the rights to his 1998 classic adventure game Grim Fandango and are working on a remastered version for release later this year.

Schafer developed Grim Fandango for LucasArts and the game received near-unanimous critical acclaim upon release. However, its sales were disappointing and contributed to LucasArts's decision to terminate development of adventure games a year or so later. The recently-released, remastered versions of the first two Monkey Island games (which Schafer also worked on) were a success, likely prompting this move. The remastered version of Grim Fandango will be released later this year on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Macintosh and PC (both Windows 7/8 and Linux).

This is excellent news. I didn't get around to playing Grim Fandango on release, but I'm looking forwards to giving this new version a try.

French publishers have been producing some superior cover art for SFF works recently, and their Marc Simonetti covers for Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are something else.

Small Gods

Simonetti is best-known in the US and UK for his work on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, producing the definitive image of the Iron Throne (as depicted in the books) for the forthcoming World of Ice and Fire. However, his Discworld art is also overwhelmingly impressive.

Soul Music

You can see all of the pictures he's produced so far on Simonetti's website here. There really should be a campaign to get Simonetti's artwork on the UK and US editions of the books as well.

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

BBC America's Orphan Blackhas been renewed for a third season. The SF show about cloning and genetics (not to mention smart writing, great humour and, in Tatiana Maslany, the most outstanding actress currently working in television) recently concluded its second season to critical acclaim.

Creator/producers Graeme Manson and John Fawcett have previously said that their original planned story arc for the show would run for three seasons and would (presumably) explain most or all of the mysteries laid out at the start of the series. However, they also said the show would not be limited to just three seasons and had ideas that could be explored in further years. It's likely that Orphan Black's eventual lifespan will be determined more by how in-demand Tatiana Maslany becomes for other projects than its own popularity, which has grown immensely between seasons. Orphan Black is BBC America's most successful home-grown production and, along with its signature import Doctor Who, has helped the network grow in popularity by leaps and bounds in the past year.

Season 3 of Orphan Black starts shooting in Toronto in September and will air in Spring 2015.

The BBC has announced it is filming a (relatively) big-budget, eight-episode TV series based on historical novelist Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series of novels.

Cornwell's series begins in 866 AD and chronicles the life story of Uhtred, a young Saxon who is kidnapped during a Danish raid and raised amongst them. He later returns to England and becomes acquainted with major historical figures of the period, most notably King Alfred the Great. There have been seven books in the series to date: The Last Kingdom (2004), The Pale Horsemen (2005), The Lords of the North (2006), Sword Song (2007), The Burning Land (2009), Death of Kings (2011) and The Pagan Lord (2013). An eighth novel, The Empty Throne, is published this October.

The BBC TV series will be called The Last Kingdom and will adapt the first few novels in the series, although how many is unclear. Cornwell's work has been adapted for television before, with no less than 16 TV movies being made of Sharpe, Cornwell's hero of the Napoleonic Wars (played by Sean Bean, who became a major star as a result).

Bernard Cornwell is a reliably entertaining author and, although this is his not his best work (his 'realistic' trilogy about Arthur, The Warlord Chronicles, takes that honour), it's still a hugely entertaining work of historical fiction. However, it is questionable if the BBC has the budget to do the series justice. It's previous 'big-budget' historical drama, The White Queen, was both tepid and fairly cheap-looking. Hopefully, with superior source material, they can do better this time around.

Thursday, 3 July 2014

Tor.com has released a lengthy extact from Ian Cameron Esslemont's Assail, his sixth and (for now) final Malazan novel.

The novel finally takes readers to the oft-mentioned, much-feared continent of Assail. Located south of Genabackis and east of Korel and Stratem, Assail is mysterious but reportedly utterly deadly, with even the formidable T'lan Imass and Crimson Guard humbled by the forces that dwell there. However, rumours of a gold rush are drawing thousands of explorers from across the world to this lethal land whilst the T'lan Imass loyal to Silverfox are also determined to rescue their beleaguered brothers from whatever threat they are facing there. And when the Crimson Guard arrive in force to rescue their own comrades, the stage is set for a convergence of epic proportions.

Scott Lynch has provided a brief update on the progress of his fourth Gentleman Bastard novel, The Thorn of Emberlain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the novel isn't going to be out this autumn, a year after The Republic of Thieves, as had originally been hoped. However, Scott reports that the book will be completed only slightly behind schedule.

On that basis and assuming no further delays, it's likely we will see the book in the first half of 2015. After a six-and-a-half year wait for The Republic of Thieves, the next book coming out just eighteen months later is still a big improvement.

From Scott:

Yeah, at this point we're not gonna hit a 2014 publication. I'm going
to scrape past the manuscript finish line well before the end of 2014,
but too late to get it on the docket in a sensible fashion. At least as
far as I know. So, early 2015, precise date TBA. Don't take anything in a
bookstore database as meaningful, look for the announcements from me
and Gollancz/Random House.

Yahoo have unexpectedly stepped in to save the NBC comedy series Community from doom. After a well-received fifth season, the series was cancelled by NBC. Attempts to rescue the show at online streaming service Hulu came to nothing and it looked like the show was toast.

Yahoo Screen then stepped in to order a 13-episode sixth season for streaming from the Internet. The sixth season is expected to debut later this year, with original showrunner and producer Dan Harmon on hand to write and run the resurrected.

How long the show will run for on its return is unknown, although one of the fanbase's most notable mottos is "Six seasons and a movie!"

Starz have picked up the TV rights to Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods. The project was previously in development at HBO for several years, but ultimately they chose to pass on it. Fremantle Media signed up the rights in a development deal and now Starz are on board to produce and air the show in the United States, with Fremantle retaining international distribution rights.

Even more excitingly, Starz have picked Bryan Fuller to produce and run the project. Fuller is the creator of Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies and, most recently and to great acclaim, Hannibal. Fuller was also widely praised for his work on the first (and best) season of Heroes. TV and comic writer Michael Green will co-produce along with Fuller.

Excellent news. The semi-sequel to American Gods, Anansi Boys, is also in development as a mini-series project at the BBC.